We Are A Community

At Michigan Ross, you gain more than just a first-class business education. Our collaborative, supportive, inclusive community enriches your experience, and sets you up with a lifetime network of friends across the globe.

Roughly 30 percent of the coursework will involve distance learning, such as viewing lectures online.

You will complete the Multidisciplinary Action Project course, for which you commit to a full week of travel and/or on-site work in late February/early March of the first year.

You take all your classes with the same group of peers, encouraging the kind of effective communication and cooperation skills that recruiters prize. And you build a deep camaraderie and forge lasting personal and professional ties.

Highlights

Leadership Development

Learn to master complex problems and lead people to solutions

You will take part in the Sanger Innovation Jam, an action-based, two-day experience aimed at delivering innovative solutions to a Fortune 500 company.

You are also welcome to take part in other leadership programs, including the Crisis Challenge.

Knowledge Building

Year One: Build your foundation with MBA core courses

At the heart of the Weekend MBA format is a core curriculum that offers you extensive training in nine fundamental areas:

accounting

finance

business communication

business economics and public policy

business law

management and organizations

marketing

technology and operations

strategy

Your first year of coursework (May through April of the following year) establishes a basic understanding of the functional responsibilities of an organization. These core courses prepare you for the Ross MAP experience at the end of the first year.

Action-Based Learning

The core of the Weekend format culminates with our signature Multidisciplinary Action Projects course, which epitomizes the Ross dedication to hands-on learning. You will work with a sponsoring company seeking a creative solution to a critical organizational challenge. Projects are hosted by incubators, startups, nonprofit organizations, and major corporations throughout the world.

Each project requires you to collaborate with a team of peers and a faculty advisor to confront the ambiguities of a real-world business challenge. You apply academic concepts, analytical skills, and creativity to frame and resolve that challenge. At the conclusion of the project, you deliver your analysis and recommendations to the sponsor and Ross faculty in a formal presentation and written report.

C-Level Thinking

Offered only to Weekend MBA students, our C-Level Thinkingcourse teaches you high-level strategy through direct interaction with business executives. The course equips you to deal with the unstructured and ambiguous situations you are sure to encounter as you rise to higher levels in your career.

Taken in your final term at Ross, the course brings together everything you’ve learned. Working in teams, with broad guidance from faculty members and executives, you will create a plan addressing a current development facing a sponsoring company. You’ll develop the habit of “meta thinking” and leave the course prepared to help guide a company’s direction.

Thematically Integrated Electives

Year Two: Integrate your learning and choose themed courses to support your individual career goals

In the second year of the Weekend MBA Program, you will choose from several course themes for a concentrated approach in your areas of interest. You will select from two themes in each of the first two terms:

Spring/summer term: Strategic Management or Entrepreneurship

Fall term: Financial Management or Operations Management

In each themed group, you’ll deepen the knowledge acquired in the core and examine a common case across several courses from different business disciplines. You might look at a growth challenge first through the lens of a financial analyst and then through the eyes of a brand manager. Or you might learn how an issue of corporate governance and transparency would be affected by a particular method of raising capital. In the final term, you will rejoin your classmates for the capstone term featuring the C-Level Thinking course. Year two in the Weekend program is all about the broad perspective required of business leaders.